In today’s article, I would like to take Malaysians back 40 years ago when the Islamic Reformation began in Malaysia.

Many Malaysians are not happy with what is happening presently in this country, where the nation’s progress is stuck in a ‘who is more Islamic’ competition between two rival political coalitions.

In one sense, the Islamic Reformation of the 1980s has come full circle but it is now split down the middle between a popular Islam of Muslims against the others and another one that is claimed to be a civilising force.

Many Malaysians are wishing perhaps that they would never have heard of the name Anwar Ibrahim or of Hadi Awang and wondered how we might have been different if these two ‘trouble makers’ were never born.

I am here to argue that we would still be in the same state but with one difference. The alternate reality may not have a solution through this impasse but the real timeline does. I will explain.

Forty years ago in Malaysia, there were four trends of Islam that were taking shape with or without Anwar and Hadi.

The first trend was of political Islam by the so-called ‘Islamic Party’ PAS that argues for an Islamic State with the Constitution of the country replaced by the Syariah and perhaps modelled after Iran or Pakistan.

Second, there was the Islamic social movement by groups of young professionals in various fields of sciences and business in the form of Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia or ABIM and the then JIM or Jemaah Islah Malaysia. These two groups believe in Islamising education, social development, economics and ultimately politics in the country.

I am not sure what model of governance that these two groups would take, but safe to say that they might lean towards the PAS model without the Dewan Ulamak sitting above Parliament.

The third group of Islamists was the Jemaah Tabligh. This is a popular group of Muslims from all walks of life dedicated to live a simple life of abstention from worldly affairs for 40 days a year and committed to the ‘Tabligh’ or Reminder to the Path of Islam, specifically to Muslims who are seen as being astray from the rituals in the mosque and contribution to community.

The Tabligh is apolitical and has no ideology of governance except that its network is bigger than the other three groups mentioned because its movement is international, having originated from India.

The fourth group is the Al-Arqam movement. The AL-Arqam movement was said to be a Sufi-based group of Muslims centring their lives on total independence from the socioeconomic framework of modern life.

The Al-Arqam led the Muslims in redefining the Music of Nasyid that conquered the whole airwaves and popularised their economic products as clean and halal.

The group established self-sustained communities but when they made the bid to be political, the BN government brought it down.

The demise was facilitated by a silence of information management that would have been a different story in today’s information-mad world.

Many Malaysians do not know of the existence of the powerful influence of Islam. Malaysians are now blaming everything bad on either Hadi Awang or Anwar.

Malaysians are shooting their keyboards from the hip saying anything and everything that upsets them without understanding anything at all except from their own narrow perspectives.

I am not here to defend any of the four groups of Islamists but I am here to say that Malaysians mostly do not know what they are complaining about except to complain.

They wish for an Anwar-less world and a Hadi-less country.

Sorry folks, without these two individuals, we would still be in the same predicament.

In 2018, after PH won the election, I wrote that Islam would be the next battlefront.

The PH made corruption their war cry but in GE15, Islam was the war cry.

I was right but no one paid heed to my call of retraining ustazs towards understanding civilisation and Islam as a complementary construct.

The PH people thought they could change the country through writing policies and smiling on RTM1. The PH people had no clue of what the internet could do, and had no idea what the enemy would throw at them.

Onwards to 40 years later, there are still three groups vying for attention, but now one group will undoubtedly be the winner and the world will see another Taliban State in Southeast Asia.

How did this happen?

When the four groups of Islamists were pandering their narratives, I would venture that 30% of the Malays joined up willingly and educated their children in Islam more seriously. The other 70% of Malays were busy making money, buying expensive cars and expensive houses with expensive holidays overseas.

These Malays knew only how to support Umno on a race-based narrative. Islam was not important to them yet.

Then, the three things that happened which no one predicted but should have guessed, the children of the first 30% Muslims began to graduate from their Islamic schools and have children of their own.

The 30% Muslims jumped to 60% because of the number of children that the Malays have, on average four kids each.

That was where the proliferation of religious schools abounds. With religious education comes a ‘holy look of life’ and also a narrow mind that does not understand the world or humankind.

What was important was unity of Ummah, defending the Ummah and praying to God so that there will be salvation in the world and in the next.

The other thing unforeseen but should have been guessed happened.

The 70% Malays grew older and began to look towards retirement and the grave. These 70% began to invest in the Akhirat or hereafter with donations to mosques, madrasas, political parties and pilgrimages to Mecca and other Prophet-related sites.

The famous TV series Jejak Rasul epitomised the idea of travelling to holy sites as a means of salvation.

The third event that no one saw but should have guessed was the cunning strategy of PAS.

PAS saw that Umno was devastated with its corruption way of life and the party befriended it. Then, when another Malay-based party was formed, PAS being like a leech, befriended it also.

PAS by now had three ‘wives’, PKR, Umno and its latest one PPBM.

PAS, it seems, will go for another ‘wife’, perhaps back to Umno with a new leadership line-up.

Now, why am I telling Malaysians all this? First, this kind of Islamisation was bound to happen with or without Anwar Ibrahim.

Malays can work hard, lie and cheat and be corrupt but at the end they will still want to go to heaven, and so they will follow whichever party that offers the simplest narrative that money and sentiment could buy.

Having to study and read about Madani Islam is too much work and who would trust a business graduate over a religious study one with the prefix Tok Guru?

Secondly, I would like to tell Malaysians that of all the personalities of the Islamic Reform that I have come across from PAS, ABIM, IKRAM-JIM, Tabligh and Al-Arqam, there was only one Islamic Reformist personality that wrote and talked about other faiths like Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism and Theosophers of the West within the framework of a civilised Islam… and that person is Anwar Ibrahim.

In his book, Asian Renaissance, he proposed the idea of a civilisation of humanity based not only on the technological development of man but also on the values of the great religions and philosophy of humanity.

There is no other personality that attempts to bridge the divide of East and West, the divide of Islam against every other religion and the divide between Science and Arts-Culture all within what he terms as Madani Islam.

In this Merdeka, Malaysians need to think whom they must support between the two clashes of Islam.

Blaming Anwar for everything is as easy as the Malays blaming others for everything else.

Why the blame game? Stop it and start reading, start a conversation and start understanding which Islam Malaysia should invest in.

Those who answer ‘neither Islam’ have forfeited their influence on Malaysia and would make an easy path to the extreme version of Islam.

Picking up an issue that the media sensationalised is easy and using that single or a few incidents and concluding that the one person that can save Malaysia should be the one that is rejected.

The Malays have clearly made their choice on an easy path to victory. The path of racial and religious unity against all other faiths, races and heritages.

It is a zero-sum game to the Malays. To change the Malays would require a decade or two of Madanisation, but if other non-Muslims keep shooting from the hips, I do not think we would go anywhere.

Finally, I have studied Islam and spirituality for 40 years. I have lived through and participated in the Islamic Reformation for 30 years. I have now come to realise that introducing Islam into politics is an extremely dangerous affair.

It is like deciding to invent and use the atomic bomb on the Japanese or risk prolonging and even losing the war.

But having invented and dropping it on lives of hundreds of thousands had started a chain reaction towards humanity’s possible self-destruction.

The Malays have a saying, ditelan mati mak dan diludah mati bapak.

The only thing I would say is that in this Merdeka, this is where we are now, and how we proceed into the next ten years requires our reflection of the past, inventorising our political sources and then we must make the leap of faith and live with our decision.

Just please, don’t shoot from the hip.

(Prof Dr. Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at a local university and his writing reflects his own personal opinion entirely.)